


Aya Dreams of Grass

by louis_quatorze



Category: Olympics RPF, Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louis_quatorze/pseuds/louis_quatorze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tomorrow they will take to the pitch at Wembley for the second time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aya Dreams of Grass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maat_seshat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maat_seshat/gifts).



Aya sleeps, and dreams of grass.

The dream is familiar. She’s had it before, other anxious times. She can’t say that the familiarity is comforting, exactly, but it’s familiar. That’s enough. 

There is grass; it’s a field. She’s not sure what field. There’s a ball ahead of her and she’s racing towards it, trying to get it, but can’t reach it. It keeps zig-zagging away somewhere, passed between players that Aya can’t identify, can’t even see, not even sure they’re really there. The only thing Aya can focus on is the ball, and the grass. Perfect grass, a lush, bright green, perfect length, occasionally marked by crisp white lines. The kind of grass she’d daydreamed about playing on as a girl.

She doesn’t hate the dreams entirely. They’re annoying and frustrating, but at least there’s a ball to chase. At least she’s running on that perfect grass. The sun is bright, the air is clear, and it’s annoying, yes, but not terrible.

Aya dreams of grass and wakes up in a small room, white painted, with accents of color. The light filters in, weak and grey in the morning. It might rain. Aya isn’t sure, but this is London, now, and she’s heard all about rain.

London stretches out beneath the window. The light here is peculiar. Fog drifts over the buildings, the gleaming ones she can see and the dark old ones she knows are there. She can’t see Big Ben from here, which is a bit of a shame. It’s the London iconography, the stuff she should see, and it’s not like she’s going to take time away from important things for a visit. 

Aya can’t say she’s impressed by London, exactly, its rough air and grey mornings, but it’s special being in England. Football comes from here, so she’s heard, invented by schoolboys with too much energy and big, broad fields. England had an empire then and brought the sport along with their gold and textiles and guns. Everyone wanted to be England. Everyone wanted to play football. Aya felt that was reasonable. How could you not want to play football, once you learned what it was?

She’s not impressed by London exactly, but the football, that’s different. What she knows of London is its football. London to her is a litany of teams and stadium names, the Emirates, Craven Cottage, Stamford Bridge, Wembley. Others had Westminster Abbey or the British Museum. Aya had stadiums. 

Tomorrow, they would play in Wembley. Second time now. That was just absurd, when Aya thought about it. When she was a girl, playing at Wembley was as possible as playing for Nankatsu. Now, she’s done it, and will soon do it again. Not quite just another stadium, but at least a real place.

Ava walks away from London and finds the day’s training suit. 

* * * * *

Training for the day is light, focused on tactics and moves and setpieces. It’s been a long month, although adrenaline goes a long way, keeping them from feeling the strain. Training today is just about review, just to keep them focused, keep their legs warm. Aya doesn’t feel like she needs to focus, and she certainly doesn’t need to go over drills again, but she can’t think of what she would do with herself if she weren’t in training. This late in the Games, the Village isn’t exactly peaceful, and she’d just end up back in that room, twitching and bored. Practice is better, for all of them, compared to being left by themselves. At least there’s grass and a ball to spin across it.

They do shooting practice and Homare slams the ball into the goal, hair streaming behind her as she runs off. Aya may wear the armband now, but in her mind it’s still Homare’s. It’s always been Homare’s, from the moment she joined the team to this moment now. Homare is the person Aya wanted to be. The brains of the team, fearless and strong, convinced that yes, they would win. Whatever winning meant.

Homare’s shot seared itself into Aya’s mind over a decade ago, and it looks the same now. The power as it sank against the knotted nylon of the net, pushing it firmly back, hasn’t diminished. When Aya was eleven it was a revelation. She hadn’t thought a girl could hit so hard.

When Aya was eleven she loved football with all her heart. She played on boys’ teams, the ones her father formed, anywhere that would let her. She played with urgency because she knew, she knew, this time was limited. She was young now and everyone was the same, but they would grow bigger than her. She might hold on through high school, but eventually, she knew, she’d have to give it up. There were limits to what was possible.

Homare had shown up at her school for a clinic and demolished all that. She was as good as anyone Aya had ever seen, as strong and as skilled as anyone. She was seventeen – older and cooler – and yet still playing football. She had a team and played for Japan and she was everyone Aya wanted to be. Looking at her, Aya saw that football was possible. She’d followed Homare everywhere, stuck to her side when she herself joined the national team, because Homare showed her what could be. 

Tomorrow, they will be on television. Thousands - hundreds of thousands - of eleven-year-old girls can watch them play, see for themselves that there is a future beyond the schoolyard fields and boy’s teams. They don’t need the serendipity of a visit. They know what’s possible in a way that Aya didn’t. 

That’s new, Aya knows. That’s since last year. She knows it in the crowds that show up to games, the requests for interviews, the clippings her grandmother saves. It’s fragile but there, this visibility, now that they’re world champions. Eleven-year-olds don’t have to grow up like Aya, convinced that football gets put away with the other toys. They know they only have to give up when their legs do. 

Tomorrow, they will be on television. A gold medal would keep them there. Aya steps up to the ball and shoots.

* * * * *

The fog is an afterthought by the time they’re back at the Village. It’s bright and warm, perfect for football, if it holds until tomorrow. They have dinner while the sun is still in the sky, and it’s good – a little nervous, but good. The dining hall hums with the chaos of the world’s athletes. They could have gone somewhere else, but Aya thinks this is better. They haven’t spent much time in the Village, with games scattered in so many places, and she wants them to have the sense of what they’re fighting for. This is the Olympics and they should feel that.

They laugh, and Aya is pleased that they can still do that. She doesn’t want the team to be tense. Alert, yes, excited, yes, but not tense. Football is still a game, and she wants the team to feel that as she feels it, to play the same way they did as schoolchildren, like the manicured grass of Wembley is the same as the dusty patched field of whatever school it was when they were girls.

In Aya’s mind the armband is still Homare’s, but she is the one who wears it now. It has subtly adjusted her thinking. It’s no longer just about her game, about what she needs to be ready for tomorrow. She has to know what they need, what they’re thinking. She monitors the way the team eats and how they act, how charged the air is, whether they’re cocky or afraid or anything else that she has to fix. They look to her now to set the tone. Today, she knows, she has to be relaxed. She has to eat with a smile and joke with everyone and project just the right air of confidence. If there are nerves, they’re not hers to show. It’s not the same as Homare was as captain, but Aya thinks it works. Hopes it works. It’s got them this far.

Aya looks at her teammates, at Azusa and Yuki and Homare and everyone else, and imagines the gleam of a gold medal around their necks. It’s no less than they deserve. She’s watched them push through everything thrown at them, play with belief and confidence while never losing their style. They win because they haven’t lost who they are. 

Aya looks across the table and feels so damn proud of them all. They’ve worked hard. Tomorrow, they will give everything they have. If they fail, it won’t be for lack of heart, lack of trying. There is no one else she’d rather have with her. 

They disperse after dinner. Aya tells them to take it easy, have an early night. She knows they’ll be nervous, thinking of the game tomorrow, but it’s the best she can do. The Village won’t be the quietest place in London, but she trusts these women. She knows that they’ll do what they have to do to prepare.

Aya returns to her own room. She sends emails and checks her websites. London slowly fades into darkness underneath her. She changes, prepares for bed.

Aya sleeps, and dreams of grass.


End file.
